Sammanfattning

Managing road verges to promote diverse and flower-rich plant communities has been proposed to mitigate the decline of pollinating insects caused by the loss of natural and semi-natural habitat. There is, however, a concern that flower-rich road verges can be ecological traps for pollinators as insects might be attracted to a habitat where there is a risk that they are killed by traffic. Therefore, we investigated the combined effects of traffic intensity and flowering plant diversity in road verges on the mortality and behaviour of bumblebee queens. The probability that an observed bumblebee queen was dead almost quadrupled when traffic increased from 100 to 6000 vehicles per day and tended to be lower when the flowering plant diversity in the road verge was high. Further, the number of nest-seeking bumblebee queens decreased dramatically with increasing traffic intensity in sites with low diversity of flowering plants, but not in sites with high diversity. Based on published data on bumblebee colony densities in different habitat types, we estimate that between 0.2 % and 32 % of all bumblebee queens present in our study landscapes were killed by traffic. We conclude that the flowering plant diversity in the road verge neither mitigates nor exacerbates the mortality from traffic. Road verges often provide pollinators with a high abundance of resources in florally poor landscapes. We therefore advise management to prioritise plant diversity along roads with low traffic intensity.

Nyckelord

Linear infrastructure habitats; Right-of-way; Ecological trap; Population sink; Semi-natural grasslands

Publicerad i

Biological Conservation
2022, Volym: 272, artikelnummer: 109643
Utgivare: ELSEVIER SCI LTD

SLU författare

• Dániel-Ferreira, Juliana

  • Institutionen för stad och land, Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet
    

• Berggren, Åsa

  • Institutionen för ekologi, Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet
    

• Bommarco, Riccardo

  • Institutionen för ekologi, Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet
    

• Wissman, Jörgen

  • Institutionen för stad och land, Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet
    

• Öckinger, Erik

  • Institutionen för ekologi, Sveriges lantbruksuniversitet
    

Associerade SLU-program

SLU Nätverk växtskydd
SLU Centrum för biologisk mångfald, CBM


Globala målen

Skydda, återställa och främja ett hållbart nyttjande av landbaserade ekosystem, hållbart bruka skogar, bekämpa ökenspridning, hejda och vrida tillbaka markförstöringen samt hejda förlusten av biologisk mångfald
Bygga motståndskraftig infrastruktur, verka för en inkluderande och hållbar industrialisering samt främja innovation


UKÄ forskningsämne

Ekologi
Miljövetenskap


Publikationens identifierare

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1016/j.biocon.2022.109643

Permanent länk till denna sida (URI)

https://res.slu.se/id/publ/118579